Where are we heading to next?

[Erendis]

Yes, I'd rather they made story with consistent lore rather than try to "subvert expectations" all the time. It did not work all that great in EW.

[MikkoAkure]

Yes, I'd rather they made story with consistent lore rather than try to "subvert expectations" all the time. It did not work all that great in EW.

Shadowbringers was arguably further out from left field than Endwalker but it's still the most popular expansion.

It's not even just ShB and EW, they've been winging it this whole time. Major plot stuff we do know that changed on the fly is how they scrapped the original ARR plan for the Ascians during 3.x and Hydaelyn wasn't planned to be Venat from the start. I also remember that Yoshi-P mentioned at a fan fest leading into ShB that they were looking at dangling plot threads and just decided to pull the one that involved an alternate dimension and a whole lot of exposition that had basically no prior basis in lore up to that point.

Yoshi-P also said that stuff that is happening now will lead to 7.0, but considering how wild 5.0's entire premise was from everything else that came before it, that will have to remain to be seen. Technically our friends' souls being sucked out one by one led to us going to the First, but that wasn't exactly obvious to us at the time and little did we know that a bunch of coma patients in our HQ and badly timed headaches would lead us to a world filled with lightsent that Godfilia only paused destruction on and we would end up on the bottom of the sea in a benevolent whale's air bubble around a gussied up Ascian city where where the Garlean Emperor tells us that we were best friends 12,000 years ago and that we were on the Ascian leadership committee in another life.

As much as I like lore in general, I've long since given up an idea of consistency and in the end I'd rather have something wild but interesting that keeps me entertained regardless of what it breaks in the meantime. For better or worse, the lore here in XIV is used as a tool for world-building rather than as a sacred bible and the writers don't let it get in the way of the story they want to tell.

If the writers didn’t want to try to subvert expectations, we would have probably had a different 5.0 than the one we got. It probably would have continued where we left off in Stormblood and we would have continued to push the Garleans and continue war and liberation while we off the remaining Ascians one-by-one. That would have been a story I’m sure a lot of people would have wanted but I’m not convinced it’s the one it needed. Shaking things up, throwing us somewhere unexpected, and developing the cast into a core group of Main Characters instead of “these are the few we care about this expansion and the rest are on missions”, went a long way. The heroes reflect their villains and any protagonist is only as good as the antagonist and I feel as though they did better in that regard than with Lahabrea, Gaius, Thordan, Zenos, and Yotsuyu.

EW had some good and some bad. I’m glad they finally stopped splitting the narrative. For a lot of other things, eh I guess you can’t win them all and it was going to be a struggle to follow up on ShB and conclude the whole thing in 1 patch anyway.

[KageTokage]

Shadowbringers was arguably further out from left field than Endwalker but it's still the most popular expansion.

The thing is they left a thread for the First hanging with the Warriors of Darkness plot in 3.4, so a lot of people were expecting it was going come up sooner or later.

Suddenly having the story drag us off to another shard with no significant build-up or foreshadowing would not feel nearly as satisfying to me; moreso when we've getting more and more bits of lore dropped about places like the New World, Meracydia, and Ilsabard as time goes on, which kindles interest.

I like this present story arc about the void specifically because it's been a constant looming threat since even the 1.0 days, so having it finally be brought to the forefront again via the MSQ was a long awaited payoff.

This does not hold for what little is known of Meracydia at this time, and I do not believe that the fantasy land of hippos and kangaroos will make for a good expansion setting. Final Fantasy players come to the franchise for a variety of reasons but *that* isn't one of them. I posited the following question in another thread and no one was able to provide a reasonable answer: What on earth are the Scions supposed to do to keep me entertained in fantasy Australia/Africa?

I largely tend to agree with your takes about things, but your repeated insistence that a continent inspired by Africa which has played host to some of man's grandest and most ancient civilizations as well as being host to a vast range of different climes and ecosystems would fail to provide intrigue where other settings haven't is a touch baffling to me. They at minimum have confirmed that there are Egyptian influences in Meracydia, and I'd personally love to see a FF take on their pantheon of gods whether as new primals or something else entirely and would also like to see a proper dunes desert as a zone.

As XIV's lore goes, it's believed to be the ancestral home of Miqo'te, is the home of Tiamat's brood, and is/was host to a colorful variety of beastman tribes who gave rise to the Warring Triad (Though Sophia seems to have been born of whatever faith the foreign settlers from the north held). I feel like there's ample potential for interesting storytelling there.